This chapter is from the book

In this chapter, you learn how to make an iPhone into your iPhone. Topics include the following:

Customizing your Home screens

Working with the Settings app

Setting the screen’s brightness, view, text size, and wallpaper

Setting keyboard, language, and format options

Choosing the sounds your iPhone makes

Setting up notifications and the Notification Center

Configuring the Control Center

Setting Do Not Disturb preferences

Setting Privacy and Location Services preferences

Setting Passcode, Touch ID, and Auto-Lock preferences

Restricting access to content and apps

There are lots of ways that you can turn an iPhone into your iPhone so that it works, looks, and sounds the way you want it to. Some examples include changing how text appears on the screen, creating and using text shortcuts, choosing the sounds your iPhone uses, configuring the notifications your iPhone displays and plays to keep you informed about what’s happening, and so on. One important customization that goes beyond just looks or sounds is to make your phone more secure by configuring and using a passcode/fingerprint and restricting access to content and apps; you should ensure your iPhone is protected with a passcode.

To do most of this personalization of your iPhone, you use the Settings app, which you’ve seen several times in the previous chapters. This app is not only the starting place for almost all of the customization you’ll do of the iPhone’s native software, but also of any apps you download and install.

You can also customize your Home screens, which is where this chapter begins.

Customizing Your Home Screens

The iPhone’s Home screens are the starting point for anything you do because these screens contain the icons that you tap to access the apps and web page icons that you want to use; you can also place icons within folders which also have icons on your Home screens. You see and use the Home screens constantly, so it’s a good idea to make them look the way you want them to.

In the background of the Lock screen and every Home screen is the wallpaper image. In the section called “Customizing the Wallpaper on the Home and Lock Screens,” you learn how to configure your iPhone’s wallpaper.

As you know, you can access apps and web page icons on your Home screens by tapping them. The Home screens come configured with icons in default locations. You can change the location of these icons to be more convenient for you. As you install more apps and create your own web page icons, it’s a good idea to organize your Home screens so that you can quickly get to the items you use most frequently. You can move icons around the same screen, move icons between the pages of the Home screen, and organize icons within folders. You can even change the icons that appear on the Home screens’ toolbar. You can also delete icons you no longer want.

Moving Icons Around Your Home Screens

You can move icons around on a Home screen, and you can move icons among screens to change the screen on which they are located.

Press the Touch ID/Home button to move to a Home screen if you aren’t there already.

Swipe to the left or right across the Home screen until the page containing an icon you want to move appears.

Tap and hold any icon. After a moment, the icons begin jiggling and you can then move icons on the Home screens. You might also see Delete buttons (an x) in the upper-left corner of some icons, which indicate that you can delete both the icon and app or the web page link (more on this later in this section).

Drag the icon to the left edge of the screen to move it to a previous page or to the right edge of the screen to move it to a later page. As you reach the edge of the screen, you move to the previous or next page.

Continue moving icons until you’ve placed them in the locations you want; then press the Touch ID/Home button. The icons are locked in their current positions, they stop jiggling, and the Delete buttons disappear.

Creating Folders to Organize Apps on Your Home Screens

You can place icons into folders to keep them organized and to make more icons available on the same page. To create a folder, do the following:

Move to the Home screen containing two icons you want to place in a folder.

Tap and hold an icon until they start jiggling; the Delete buttons appear.

When the first icon is on top of the second and a border appears around the second icon, lift your finger. The two icons are placed into a new folder, which is named based on the type of icons you place within it. The folder opens and you see its default name.

Drag the icon you want to place into a folder on top of the folder’s icon so that the folder’s icon enlarges. (The icon doesn’t have to be on the same Home screen page; you can drag an icon from one page and drop it on a folder on a different page.)

When the folder opens, lift up your finger. The icon is placed within the folder and you see its current location within the folder. (If you don’t want to change the icon’s location when you place it in the folder, lift up your finger as soon as the folder’s icon enlarges; this places the icon in the folder but doesn’t cause the folder to open. This is more efficient when you want to place multiple icons within a folder during the same time period.)

To remove an icon from a folder, tap the folder from which you want to remove the icon to open it. Tap and hold the icon you want to remove until it starts jiggling. Drag the icon you want to remove from inside the folder to outside the folder. When you cross the border of the folder, the folder closes and you can place the icon on a Home screen.

When you place an icon that has a badge (the red circle with a number in it that indicates the number of new items in an app) in a folder, the badge transfers to the folder so that you see it on the folder’s icon. You still see the number of new items, but you can’t really tell which of the apps in the folder is generating the badge. When you place more than one app with a badge in the same folder, the badge on the folder becomes the total number of new items for all the apps in the folder. You need to open a folder to see the badges for individual apps it contains.

Configuring the Home Screen Toolbar

The toolbar on the bottom of the Home screen appears on every page. You can place any icons on the toolbar that you want, including folder icons.

Move to the Home screen containing an icon you want to place on the toolbar.

Tap and hold an icon until the icons start jiggling and the Delete buttons appear.

Press the Touch ID/Home button to set the icons in their current places.

Deleting Icons

You can delete icons from a Home screen to remove them from your iPhone. When you delete an app’s icon, its data is also deleted and you won’t be able to use the app anymore (of course, you can download it again if you change your mind). When you delete a web page’s icon (see Chapter 13, “Surfing the Web,” for information on creating web page icons), the bookmark to that web page is deleted.

Move to the Home screen containing an icon you want to delete.

Tap and hold an icon until the icons start jiggling and the Delete buttons appear.

Tap Delete. If the icon was for an app, it and any associated data on your iPhone are deleted. If the icon was for a bookmark, the bookmark is deleted.

>>>Go Further: More On Organizing Home Screens

Organizing your Home screens can make the use of your iPhone more efficient and make it more what you want it to be. Here are a few more things to keep in mind:

You can place many icons in the same folder. When you add more than nine, any additional icons are placed on new pages within the folder. As you keep adding icons, pages keep being added to the folder so that it opens. You can swipe to the left or right within a folder to move among its pages, just as you can to move among your Home screen.

To change a folder’s name, move to a screen showing the folder. Tap and hold an icon until the icons jiggle. Tap the folder so that it opens, and then tap the current name. Type the new name, tap Done, and tap outside the folder to close it. Press the Touch ID/Home button to complete the process.

To delete a folder, remove all the icons from it. The folder is deleted as soon as you remove the last icon from within it.

You can delete only icons for things you’ve added to your iPhone, which are either apps you’ve installed or bookmarks to web pages you’ve added. You can’t delete any of the default apps, which is why their icons don’t have Delete buttons when you press and hold the Touch ID/Home button to move into Edit mode. If you don’t use some of these default icons, move them to pages of your Home screen that you don’t use very often so they don’t get in your way, or create a folder for unused icons and store them there, out of your way.

To return your Home screens to how they were when you first started using your iPhone, open the Settings app (covered in the next section), tap General, Reset, Reset Home Screen Layout, and Reset Home Screen. The Home screens return to their default configurations. Icons you’ve added are moved onto the later pages.

You can also organize your iPhone’s Home screens using iTunes on a computer. Move to the Sync screen in iTunes and click Apps. You see thumbnails for each of your Home page screens. Using techniques similar to those you’ve learned in this section, you can move icons around, create folders, place icons in folders, and so on. When you sync the iPhone, the Home screens change accordingly. Refer to Chapter 5, “Working with iTunes on Your Computer,” for information about using iTunes on a computer.